I'd call the Maintenance Branch at the US PTO, 703-308-5068, to resolve the discrepancy. In similar cases which I have investigated, an expired patent for which a petition to revive was granted hadn't been reported in INPADOC or CLAIMS Post-Issuance. Since I don't have hardcopy access to a long run of Official Gazettes, what I didn't do was confirm that the reinstated patent ever appeared in the OG's list of revived patents. I know that IFI monitors those OG lists as key data points for the Post-Issuance database. But it certainly seems unlikely that an applicant would pay maintenance fees several years after a patent lapsed.
Roy Zimmermann
Principal Patent Information Specialist
763-505-2527 763-505-2530 (Fax)
roy.zimmermann@medtronic.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Phillips, Peter [mailto:pphillips@leydig.com]
Sent: Thursday, December 05, 2002 11:04 AM
To: 'PIUG-L@derwent.co.uk'
Subject: Assessing conflicting information on legal status for
U.S.patent
> I am often asked to ascertain, in connection with rendering a
> freedom-to-operate opinion, whether a third party's U.S. patent has
> expired for failure to pay a maintenance fee. The three tools I use are
> (1) the IFI Claims(r) database, (2) the INPADOC legal status table
> furnished on the Delphion server, and (3) the U.S. Patent Office's public
> PAIR page.
>
> In checking on U.S. Pat. 5,080,006, I find that IFI Claims(r) shows
> expiration, with no reinstatement, for failure to pay maintenance fee on
> 17 Jan. 1996 (published OG 19 March 1996), that INPADOC on Delphion
> confirms the same information, but that the public PAIR page shows not
> only that the 1996 maintenance fee was paid, but so was the 1999
> maintenance fee. My view is that the public PAIR page has the right
> information, but the two commercial databases are both, independently,
> wrong. Is that a reasonable conclusion?
>
> Peter Phillips
> Leydig, Voit & Mayer, Ltd.
> (312) 616-5600 voice
> (312) 616-5700 fax
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